At once mirror of the supra-sensible and itself a supernatural ray of light.
(GTUFS: LightAW, Man in the Universe)
The Intellect – which is precisely what makes evident to us the absoluteness of the Self
and the relativity of “objectivations” – is only “human” to the extent that it is accessible
to us, but it is not so in itself; it is essentially increatus et increabile (Eckhart), although
“accidentally” created by virtue of its reverberations in the macrocosm and in
microcosms; geometrically speaking, the Intellect is a ray rather than a circle, it
“emanates” from God rather than “reflecting” Him. “Allah is known to Himself alone”
say the Sufis; this saying, while it apparently excludes man from a direct and total
knowledge, in reality enunciates the essential and mysterious divinity of pure Intellect;
formulae of this kind are only fully understandable in the light of the often quoted hadith:
“He who knows his soul knows his Lord”. (GTUFS: LightAW, Maya)
Remove the passional element from the soul and the intelligence – remove “the rust from
the mirror” or “from the heart” – and the Intellect will be released; it will reveal from
within what religion reveals from without.*
(* This release is strictly impossible – we must insist upon it – without the co-operation
of a religion, an orthodoxy, a traditional esoterism with all that this implies.) (GTUFS: EsoterismPW, Understanding Esoterism)
The Intellect ‘is divine’, first because it is a knower – or because it is not a non-knower –
and secondly because it reduces all phenomena to their Principle; because it sees the
Cause in every effect, and thus surmounts, at a certain level, the vertiginous and devouring multiplicity of the phenomenal world. (GTUFS: GnosisDW, Is there a Natural Mysticism?)
Intellect (created / uncreated): The Intellect, in a certain sense, is ‘divine’ for the mind and ‘created’ or ‘manifested’ for God: it is none the less necessary to distinguish between a ‘created Intellect’ and an ‘uncreated Intellect’, the latter being the divine Light and the former the reflection of this Light at the center of Existence; ‘essentially’, they are One, but ‘existentially’, they are distinct, so that we could say, in Hindu style, that the Intellect is ‘neither divine nor non-divine’, an elliptical expression which doubtless is repugnant to the Latin and Western mentality, but which transmits an essential shade of meaning. However that may be, when we speak of the Heart-Intellect, we mean the universal faculty which has the human heart for its symbolical seat, but which, while being ‘crystallised’ according to different planes of reflection, is none the less ‘divine’ in its single essence. (GTUFS: GnosisDW, Ternary Aspect of the Human Microcosm)
Intellect (“supernaturally natural” function): The contemplation of the Immutable, of the Self which is Reality, Consciousness and Bliss. (GTUFS: LogicT, The Alchemy of the Sentiments)
Intellect / Reason: Intellectual intuition comprises essentially a contemplativity which in no way enters into the rational capacity, the latter being logical rather than contemplative; it is contemplative power, receptivity in respect of the Uncreated Light, the opening of the Eye of the Heart, which distinguishes transcendent intelligence from reason. The latter perceives the general and proceeds by logical operations, whilst Intellect perceives the principial – the metaphysical – and proceeds by intuition. Intellection is concrete in relation to rational abstractions, and abstract in relation to the divine Concreteness. (GTUFS: GnosisDW, Vicissitudes of Different Spiritual Temperaments)
The INTELLECT is a receptive faculty and not a productive power: it does not “create,” it receives and transmits; it is a mirror reflecting reality in a manner that is adequate and therefore effective. In most men of the “iron age” the INTELLECT is atrophied to the point of being reduced to a mere virtuality, although doubtless there is no watertight partition between it and the reason, for a sound process of reasoning indirectly transmits something of the INTELLECT; be that as it may, the respective operations of the reason – or the mind – and of the INTELLECT are fundamentally different from the point of view that interests us here, despite certain appearances due to the fact that every man is a thinking being, whether he be wise or ignorant. There is at the same time analogy and opposition: the mind is analogous to the INTELLECT insofar as it is a kind of intelligence, but is opposed to it by its limited, indirect and discursive character; as for the apparent limitations of the INTELLECT, they are merely accidental and extrinsic, while the limits of the mental faculty are inherent in it. Even if the INTELLECT cannot exteriorize the “total truth” – or rather reality – because that is in itself impossible, it can perfectly well establish points of reference which are adequate and sufficient, rather as it is possible to represent space by a circle, a cross, a square, a spiral or a point and so on . . . There is no difficulty in the fact that pure intelligence – the INTELLECT – immensely surpasses thought, and that there is no continuity – despite the identity of essence – between a concept as such and reality, the aseity of the real; to lament over the shortcomings of thought is to ask it to be something that it is not; this is the classical error of philosophers who seek to enclose everything in the cogito alone. From the point of view of concrete – not abstract – knowledge of the transcendent, the problem of thought is resolved in the very nature of the INTELLECT. There are objects which exceed the possibilities of reason; there are none that exceed those of intelligence as such. (GTUFS: LSelf, Orthodoxy and Intellectuality)
Intellect / Revelation: The INTELLECT knows through its very substance all that is capable of being known and, like the blood flowing through even the tiniest arteries of the body, it traverses all the egos of which the universe is woven and opens out “vertically” on the Infinite. In other words: the INTELLECTive center of man, which is in practice subconscious, has knowledge, not only of God, but also of man’s nature and his destiny; and this enables us to present Revelation as a “supernaturally natural” manifestation of that which the human species knows, in its virtual and submerged omniscience, both about itself and about God. (GTUFS: UIslam, The Path)
Pure Intellection is a subjective and immanent Revelation just as Revelation properly so called is an objective and transcendent Intellection. (GTUFS: LogicT, Abuse of the Ideas of the Concrete and the Abstract)
Intellect / Spirit: Intellect and Spirit coincide in their essence in that the former is like a ray of the latter. The Intellect is the Spirit in man; the Divine Spirit is nothing other than the universal Intellect. (GTUFS: UIslam, The Prophet)